This American Life; Kindness of Strangers; Part 1

It was standing on a subway platform, afternoon rush hour, it was crowded and he noticed this guy didn't seem harmless, decent clothes stopping in front of each person, looking into his or her eyes, saying something and moving on to the next person. Turns out the guy was telling people they could stay or they had to go or they were in or they were out doing. What would he say? Well, literally, it would be it would be you. You're out. You're gone. You're gone. You're OK. You can stay and then. Do people leave? No, not at all. I mean, no one argued with them. Wrote about the incident on his personal website Bretonneux. I may ask you to read a little bit of your account of this from your website. You write about who he decided to keep and who he decided to to go. Right. These are the last few people before he reaches me, the fiftyish woman and the business suit and thick glasses as summarily dismissed the homy and the baggy shorts. And Chicago Bulls jersey makes the cut.

The young immigrant mother, who seems not to grasp the import of this moment, has given the OK oh versus you. Who's grasping just how important this is? The bookish man in the maroon cardigan sweater with balding head and red face that's cut loose with particular relish. There is something about the judgment of strangers when the cork in the record store seems unimpressed by your choice of CDs, when the one cute person on the bus gives you a look like out of my way, it does it by their status as strangers. They have some special, instantaneous insight into who we are. Their vision isn't clouded by our feeble attempts to charm our friends and the people we work with. The guy got closer to Brett and I'm starting to feel a little nervous and aware of the fact where I make the cut. It sounds so silly. I mean, we all like to think that we're evolved enough or mature enough. But when push comes to shove in, a guy's guy's going down the line writing.

I found that you can't help but kind of hope that he he gives you the thumbs up when your turn comes. But he's not choosing you for anything. No, he's not. And he didn't even look like anyone I particularly wanted to to hang with, you know, I mean, as much as one can tell, can tell from someone's appearance, you didn't really feel any need to impress this guy. No. No. I mean, to me, it's like I think you're right, because this is the purest case I've ever heard of, literally, he's picking you for nothing, right? And yet you want to be chosen. Exactly. So the guy walks up to Bret, stands actually a little too close to him, looks in his eyes and says, you can stay. And Bret felt euphoria, a small euphoria. Sure. In his mind, he knew there's no reason to feel so good about this.

But in his heart, it made him feel really, really happy. It was like, all right. You wrote in your account of this, I find myself against my own better judgment now, looking with some disdain and perhaps a tinge of pity upon those who didn't make the cut. Sure. I mean, you can't make this guy's cut. Come on. How terrible. You write to be excluded, to be found unworthy. But no one has ever claimed life, to be fair. No, they haven't. In a sense, this guy on the subway was committing a perfect act of kindness to people who he gave the thumbs up to, that good people who he told to get lost simply ignored him. No one was hurt. It was a simple act of kindness from a stranger. Which brings us to today's radio program from Chicago and Public Radio International. It is this American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our show, Stories of the kindness of Strangers and what it leads to.

And for the best perspective on the subject, all of our stories today take place in the city that has the reputation for being the unkindest city in America. New York City Act. One of our show, Tarzan finds a mate in which a good deed is done with the hope of a small reward act to run away, in which a small good deed leads to much bigger things. Act three The Kindness of Strangers. A story about a neighbor who tries to make life hell for the person next door. Act for Chairman of the Block, a story of 150 people who don't know each other. A tap dancer, New York cops and Frank Sinatra. Stay with us. Hagwon Tarzan finds a mate, this true story of a good deed someone tries to do for a stranger comes from Joel Kosterman, who is a locksmith in New York. It's a little past midnight, and I've just returned home from dropping my girlfriend Deborah off at the airport. Late at night is the only time of day I like the way my block looks.

There are no panhandlers. The parking lots are all empty and the constant noise you hear in the daytime from the exiting Lincoln Tunnel, traffic is minimized. It almost looks like a real street, a place where people live. Remarkably, I find a parking space right in front of my building, I sit in the car with the motor running, listening to the radio and thinking about Deborah. We live together this morning. I thought we were in love tonight. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to see her again. The plays of Freddie and the Dreamers tune, I'm telling you now. Suddenly, I hear someone across the street yell something, I look up and a young woman is standing next to a red sports car, her head resting on the roof. Damn, damn, damn. She moans, pounding an alternate fist down with each word. She steps back her hands on her hips and looks around as if for a lost child, she has straight blond hair which hangs down to her shoulders. She's wearing tight blue jeans, a yellow shirt unbuttoned down

to her cleavage and black spike heels. She's got on bright red lipstick and gold interlocking circles for earrings. They jangle when she turns her head. Oh, damn, she says again and throws her bag at the car. It's a Porche. I shut off my engine and get out. I don't want to scare her, so I call from across the street. Excuse me. You need some help? She's bending down on the sidewalk, picking up some things that fell out of her bag. She looks up and for a second I think she's going to scream. Then she smiles. I locked my keys in the car, she says, and she stands up. I can't believe I did this. Her hands do a kind of Betty Boop thing. I decide that she's Jersey here for a concert at the Garden. She just has that jersey feel. You're in luck, I say, still from across the street, she purses her lips and nods. Why, you're going to take me out for a drink till the tow truck gets

here? She laughs, but starts coughing in the middle, I go to my trunk and remove my car lock out stuff. A pretty stranded Jersey girl with a sense of humor, no less, I say to myself. There's something in her face that reminds me of a young Jessica Lange. Across the street with my Slim Jim, in one hand, it's a thin, silvery piece of metal about two feet long, with some notches cut out at the bottom, used to open car doors. I carry it at my side like a sword, like a knight would. In my other hand, I grasp my tool kit. In my shirt pocket is the little leather case that contains my picks, which I bring just in case I run into any trouble. I step up on the sidewalk next to her, I'm a locksmith, I announce I love these moments when I get to play the hero. She has a loopy smile on her face, which stays there even as her expression slowly changes. I can smell the alcohol in her breath.

She looks at the Slim Jim and then back at my face. No, she says, well, I guess it's my lucky day, she lays a hand on my shoulder like we're old pals. She squeezes and then leans on me a little. Her head floats around in front of my face. You open it up and the drinks are on me, she says in a kind of half growl. I peer into the car window and see the keys dangling from the ignition. There are a couple of empty beer bottles on the floor, on the passenger side. I look back at the woman. She's got a cigaret going. Now, at that moment from behind us, we hear a long, clear Tarzan call. It's a perfect imitation, lasting about 10 seconds, complete with the jungle yodels in the middle. What the hell was that?

The woman asks, she steps out toward the street and leans her head way back, she looks up at the parking structure that's a block north on 31st Street. I get a real good look at her then. That's Tarzan, I say she tilts her head to the side, half closes her right eye and raises her left eyebrow. Friend of yours, she asks. I think he works in the parking structure, I say, oh, she says with a look on her face that says that explains everything. She puts her hands behind her and leans back. I momentarily think about Deborah, the woman in front of me couldn't be more different in appearance. She's as tall as I am with an accent out of a Stallone movie. She looks like a wild Fun-Loving gal, good working class stock. I wonder what she's like when she's sober. So you're going to do your thing or what the woman asks. I hold up my Slim Jim action, she says.

I dipped my Slim Jim into the car door, feeling around, I tried different angles, different depths, nothing happens. She hops off the hood of the car and stands next to me. No luck. She has not yet. It's a hot night, she takes a tissue from her bag and says, here you're sweating buckets. I wipe my forehead, the tissue smells like perfume, she removes another one and dabs at her neck and chest, she flaps her hand in front of her face like a fan. I've got air conditioning in there. Once you get it open, she says, I'll have it open in a minute. I say I start thinking about her behind the wheel of the car and where will go. She rummages around in the bag again and produces a pack of cigarets. She lights one up, takes a drag and blows the smoke up toward the sky. I haven't smoked in 10 years, but it still resonates for me how it feels, how sexy it looks, which is why I think people do it.

She offers me one. No thanks. I say sorry, I don't have anything stronger. She smiles. I smile back and she strikes a pose that smokers do right arm bent at the elbow forearm across the body. The left elbow rests on the right wrist and the forearm goes straight up the fingers of the lips. I pulled the Slim Jim out harder than you thought, huh? She says some foreign cars are tough. I say, can I try? You want to try? Yeah, who knows. Maybe it'll be like beginner's luck. It looks like fun. I don't know why, but I say, sure, I slide the Slim Jim through the space between the window and the rubber stripping. She takes the end of it like this? She asks, moving it back and forth like a slot machine handle. No, I say, actually, you kind of go like this.

I take her hand, move it up and down, slowly bobbing the end of the tool slightly from side to side. We're doing a kind of Slim Jim tango, dipping in and out and up and down the car door won't open, but she doesn't even seem perturbed. It's like we're playing a game. I'm going to try to pick it. I say, can I still do this? She asks. Sure, I'll work on the other door. As I step away, we suddenly hear Tarzan again, it's louder this time he must be on a lower floor. It's a particularly beautiful call and he really trails out the last note. The woman bends over double and slaps her thighs in rapid fashion. I love that she cries. That is just fabulous local color, I say. I take my can of WD 40 and lubricate the cylinder. That guy should be on TV or something. I squat by the other side of the car.

I insert the tension bar in the cylinder and hold it down with my thumb. Then I work the rake through several times. After a couple of minutes, I'm starting to get frustrated. I say I'll be right back. I'm going to get something else. I run to my car and remove the metal darling I bought on Canal Street for this very situation. It's long and sturdy, but pliable. I bring it back across the street here. I say, you hold this. She lays the Slim Jim down on the sidewalk. I insert a large screwdriver between the door and the body of the car. Just put a little pressure on it like this. I say as I push back, that'll give me room to maneuver. She stands behind me and pushes back on the screwdriver, I bend the end of the dowel into an L and slide it in, I push it toward the button, which is in an impossible spot on the door panel just behind the handle. I'm thinking this car really is a pain in the ass. I wiggle my end of the door and poke at the area of the button, but I keep missing.

How does that button work, I ask? Do you push it forward or in or what? G she says, I don't know. Let me think. She bobs her head slowly side to side and finally says in, I think I think I keep poking at the button once I hit it square on and let out a whoop. But when I try the door, it doesn't open. Damn, I yell and slam my fist down on top of the Porche. Hey, she says, come on, we'll get it. She puts her hand on my arm. You know, you're really a sweet guy for helping me out. She leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. When Deborah said goodbye to me at the airport, she said, maybe you and I should take the next few days to reevaluate. Then she put her hand on my upper arm and kissed me on the cheek. Let's try it again. The woman says, listen, I say I'm sorry, I'm just frustrated I usually don't have this much trouble.

It's OK. She says, I know we're going to get at this time. She punches the air like a cheerleader. We try again, I twist the dowel around to get it in just the right position and then push it forward with my hand so it will come smashing into the button. The door doesn't open. I do it again and again as my body bumps into the woman's and rubs up against her. I get more and more crazy. I can feel my hero status evaporating. Finally, after about 15 minutes, she says, you know, I think if I push this way with the screwdriver, it'll make more room. I think it'll be a lot easier for you before I can stop her. She leans against the car and pushes. There's a loud crack. The window shatters into pieces which fall on the sidewalk at our feet. I look at her face, her mouth is wide open, her shoulders raised in embarrassment. Then suddenly she opens the door, brushes the glass off the seat with her bag and gets in.

Well, I got to go, she says. She starts the car. I don't know how to thank you. She speeds off toward Eighth Avenue. Goodbye, she calls out. I am stunned by the swiftness of her departure. As I watch her drive off her hand waving out the window, Tarzan gives his grand finale. His voice is so strong that it sounds like he's right behind me. His call begins with one beautiful, long, sustained note. He holds it longer than I have ever heard before. Then he leaps into a spectacular trill, which ends with another gorgeous full note and follows this with the second trill, which trails off into a final, eerie, haunting tone. I turned to face the parking structure. I'm standing in the middle of a pile of my discarded tools and broken glass. I lean my head way back looking up at the sky. I cut my hands around my mouth, take the deepest possible breath and

yell at the top of my lungs. Shut the hell up. Joe Cossman story of his life as a locksmith in his new book, Keys to the City, it hits bookstores in October. Well, she talks like that. She looks like she's a traveler and she knows what she's going through is like a model for talks, like a lawyer. She sounds like a member. She takes like scholar. Straight to her, I know she's not listening to run away when you commit an act of kindness for a stranger, where can it lead? In 1940, Jack Geiger was 14 years old, not getting along with his parents because of the odd rules of the New York City schools. At that time, he had actually finished high school, but no college will go to him. And so young he wasn't getting along with his parents, fought with him all the time, and then he went to see a play native son, Orson Welles as Mercury

Theater production of the Richard Wright novel, which starred. A black actor named candidly and I was very moved by that and with the brashness of a 40 year old, I went backstage afterwards and found candidly and hung around and talk with him a while. And I like that so much that I did that three or four more times. Do you recall what it is that that you were talking to him about what you wanted to talk to him? Well, we started out talking about the play and Richard Wright and the main character, Bigger Thomas and race relations in the United States. And pretty soon we got around to either second or third conversation, at least what was going on in my life and what I wanted to do and my conflicts and so on. He learned a lot more about me than I did about him, I think at that point in those conversations. And then one day when the conflict at home just got a lot tougher,

I waited till a Sunday when I knew there was no performance of native son and my folks were out and I packed a bag and I took a subway up to the top of Sugar Hill in Harlem, 555 Edgecombe Avenue, where I knew that Canada had a penthouse. And I went up and rang the doorbell and he was home and opened the door. And I said, leave the stuff at home is just getting too much. And I thought maybe I could stay here for a while, cold just like that. And he kind of looked around and pointed to a couch in the living room and said, well, I guess you could sleep over there. After I had gone to sleep that evening, I later learned he called my folks and said, look, I'll send them back in the morning, but why don't you let him stay here? Because I'm not sure where he's going to land the next time.

And my parents must have been so exhausted by all of this that they agreed, at least tentatively. And that was the beginning of a whole year that I really lived there and had one of the great educational experiences of my life. Through that apartment over that year that I remember came the kind of the cream of the Harlem theatrical, sporting, civil rights, political and intellectual world, and I had the chance to sit around the evening after evening, many weekends listening to Langston Hughes, William Saroyan, Adam Clayton Powell, Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington's arranger, Richard Wright, who came back once from exile and stopped in. And what I remember most is listening to people, listening

to the conversations about World War two and race and democracy, segregation in the armed forces, what was happening in the South, what was happening in New York City. Let me ask you to assess what do you think your parents reaction was when they got this first call from Canada way to have to have their white Jewish middle class son suddenly living with a black man in Harlem in the early 40s? Well, I think they were exhausted. We had had so much struggle a little later. I remember further on when we were talking to each other again, Lee was giving a party and invited my parents, who with great trepidation, came up to Harlem at night. I don't think they had ever done that before and came to this party. And Canada, I remember, turned to my mother and said,

hey, I'm a bachelor. Do you think you could help us out in the kitchen? It was a big party. And my mother said, sure. Next day I talked to my mother on the phone and she said she had had the most wonderful time, had spent a couple of hours in the kitchen with this wonderful man. And they've had all this conversation. And I said, Who was it? She said, well, she didn't know she'd never gotten the name. I said, well, describe it. And she discovered that she had spent two hours chatting with Langston Hughes. I was mortified that she had never realized it. What did they talk about? Oh, you had to have met Langston Hughes to know he was as comfortable as an old shoe. And I'm sure they talked about cooking and I'm sure they talked about whatever else my mother wanted to talk about. And she never quite got over it.

Still recalled it. During that year, he was kind of an informal surrogate father, and I was in that stage where I wasn't going to take anything from the parents I was fighting with. So he would take me to a good bit of my first year at college when I found a place that would finally let me in. And so he paid for your school while he loaned me the money instead of your parents. Yeah. It wasn't until a little later that I figured out why unconsciously, maybe I had made the choice that I did. It turned out, although I didn't know it at the time, that Canada, Lee himself, had grown up in a pretty strict middle class West Indian

family. And he had he told me the same kind of dissatisfactions and. Mixed up feelings that I had about his relationship with his family, what he wanted to do, and he ran away, and I think that experience may have had something to do with his kindness and taking this strange kid in and making a sort of second home for him. The thing I've thought about is a lot without ever really finding an answer is what kind of clues that I have that said, hey, this is a guy that I can approach in this way, a scrawny kid with a suitcase on a Sunday night and have some kind of shot at getting taken in. I was either very insightful or very lucky, and I think it was mostly luck.

Do you think there were clues that you were giving them? I think there must have been clues just in the fact that here was a Broadway star who was hanging around backstage talking with a kid about life and about his troubles. That's a signal that I don't think anybody could have missed. Check live with Canada for a year, sometimes Lee's teenage son would be there to check, went to college, enlisted in the Merchant Marines during World War Two, serving on the only ship with a black captain and integrated crew of officers, the USS Booker T. Washington. When Jack would come home to New York on school break or from the Merchant Marines, he would stay with Canada. We then, on one of Jack's trips home, candidly told Jack that he was pressed for cash. Asked if he could borrow a thousand dollars. And I said sure. And I loaned it to him.

And I came back for the next trip and he paid me back. And it took me a while in retrospect to figure out that he didn't need the thousand dollars. He was just changing the nature of the relationship between us and saying, hey, now you're grown up and now you're an adult and I'm not your dad anymore. We're partners. I can borrow money from you just the way you borrowed money from me as a way of evening. The scales. As he got older, Jack became a journalist than a doctor active in the civil rights movement, went to Mississippi with the civil rights workers in the early 60s, was a founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and later, Physicians for Human Rights, started community health centers in Mississippi and in South Africa. In this country, those health centers eventually led to 900 community health centers. They now provide primary care for eight million low income people across the country.

Jack Geiger says he'd never have moved so deeply into this world so quickly, if not for his experience with Canada. It's a relationship, very obviously, that has stayed with me ever since most of my life. And work is one way or another involved. Civil rights and human rights must be one of the reasons why I became a physician of wanting to look out for people who are in trouble. Was it your impression that other people had extended this kind of act of kindness to him, that he then extended to you or that he had yearned for for so that someone would have taken him in the way that he took you out? I think, you know, what occurs to me now is that is something I learned in the Harlem community and in a lot of other work, there was a lot more experience in the black community of extended family.

And I don't think in that context, from that side of the divide, it felt like such a big deal. Well, you're saying in a way that the black culture at that time was more conducive to extending kindness to strangers than white culture? I think so. And maybe still. Jack Geiger in New York. Coming up, good neighbors and bad neighbors in the same neighborhood, a street mob, a tap dancer, a P.A. system, and the chairman of the board. That's in a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues.